9.. Life in Portland

Wanda Marcks Cook: No.

Bob Zybach: Were you still raising oats that far back in the Valley?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Yes. Oats for hay. Oats and vetch.

Bob Zybach: Okay. I'd like to get a clear idea. . what I'm tiying to do is make sure I get a clear idea of this.

Wanda Marcks Cook: Yes, well, and then on the Cook farm, they would plow down by the creek and raise field corn.

Bob Zybach: For the stock?

Wanda Marcks Cook: For the stock to eat in the wintertime. That's another job I had, to tramp down the sows.

Bob Zybach: Wow. Mat jobs didn't you have?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Well. . [motion with hands to turn off machine]

Bob Zybach: Do you want me to turn it off[turn off machine to give details]? I'll ask you questions and I'll get somebody to.

9. Life in Portland

Bob Zybach: Sound's to me like you're pretty much an early day feminist. You really wanted to take your lfe in your own hands and.

Wanda Marcks Cook: You're talldng too fast.

Bob Zybach: It sounds to me like your were. . for that day and age and for a woman you were.

Wanda Marcks Cook: I wanted to make a g of it. I had the energy and the knowledge. I had the ffl, but it takes.

Bob Zybach: Two to tango?

Wanda Marcks Cook: I was going to say that.

Bob Zybach: Just nying to interpret your hand 5/gnal for the recording.

Wanda Marcks Cook: Yeah. It just wouldn't work out. It wasn't in the cards. Everybody isn't a farmer, you know, they may think they are, but they aren't.

Bob Zybach: Were you sony to give up your.

Wanda Marcks Cook: It takes

Bob Zybach: .fannljft?

Wanda Marcks Cook: I was, but it wouldn't go so the thing to do is do the best you can with what you have to work with.

Bob Zybach: So then..

Wanda Marcks Cook: That sounds a little callous but I don't. . I was too young to understand.

Bob Zybach: It sounds pretty practical.

Wanda Marcks Cook: Well, after all you don't live another forty years without learning something.

Bob Zybach: Yeah. I'm learning a lot here, right now. Did you. . was it harder for a woman when you came to Portland, you went to school, you went into business on your own, was it harder in those days or was it easier for a woman?

Wanda Marcks Cook: No, it wasn't difficult. I think a great dear of it was the attitude I had. I wasn't a dreamer but I could work out a thing and work toward it and was willing to put my shoulders to the wheel and work hard. And finally had my own [beauty] shop and four operators.

Bob Zybach: How long did you keep the shop?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Long past retirement age, and then I worked a little while after that, but I worked for

Wanda Marcks Cook: others all my life, I've been a volunteer. I can't help it, I was brought up that way. On the farm you helped each other out. With illness, the farmer next door would even help with the crops. His wife went in a helped with the housework. That's the way we were brought up.

Bob Zybach: What kind of. . you say you still volunteer?

Wanda Marcks Cook: I work as a volunteer at the Salvation Army, Senior Citizens, and I can't stand any more, I am a cancer victim. I can't stand, but I can sit and stuff that my hands can do whatever needs. Pulled a ligament here in my shoulder that's why I sit with my elbow on this and work with my hands.

Bob Zybach: Detennined to work.

Wanda Marcks Cook: Well, you go stir crazy sitting in a place like this.

Bob Zybach: During the time you were at the Soap Creek, what do you think the most pleasant thing that you did for recreation?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Riding a horse.

Bob Zybach: Riding a horse, huh?

Wanda Marcks Cook: And none of this going around a ring or jumping a fence, in fact, when we sold some stock my husband got sick and my younger brother and I drove the stock down seven miles to the railroad and sold them all and I was thinldng the other day, wondering what we did about the saddles, then we had one horse to get home on and we did what the they call rides and tie. Do you know what that is?

Bob Zybach: No.

Wanda Marcks Cook: The fellow on the horse rides a mile and then he ties the horse to a fence post somewhere and starts walking and the other fellow walks up until he gets to the horse and he gets on the horse and he rides and ties. That's how my brother and I got home, we had one horse.

Bob Zybach: Oh. [motions to turn off tape, then resumes]

Wanda Marcks Cook: And I want that clear that there was no.

Bob Zybach: Animosity.

Wanda Marcks Cook: No, and it wasn't any meanness or any. . not deliberate, just the nature. Lack of character.

Bob Zybach: I'm kind offeeling that. . one point I'm trying to get to; you ride horses and you did a lot work down in Soap Creek.

Wanda Marcks Cook: Yes, there wasn't much time for recreation.

Bob Zybach: Seems like you're still pretty nostalgic for that period, that that was a good period of your 4fè.

Wanda Marcks Cook: But really reading was my outlet. And at that time the State of Oregon had boxed books at the Library came from Salem and they sent them out into the rural areas and they were assigned to some farmer and then the whole neighborhood could borrow the books, a traveling library. And those books were always at our house, my dad, we had all the magazines that were going. Every child had a magazine come, you know, in his own name. You were taught to read and to think. And Mrs. Blake taught me a lot about reading. And if I couldn't read now, I'd be sunk. I tell you a person who reads is never alone though. You know, you'd be alone and there'd be times when you feel kind of lonesome but there's always the books.

Bob Zybach: zat kind of reading do you do now?

Wanda Marcks Cook: I like historical novels, and I like. . are you familiar with Dayton Hyde?

Bob Zybach: No.

Wanda Marcks Cook: He's a rancher in Eastern Oregon, you've heard the story of "Sandy" the Sandhill Crane?

Bob Zybach: Yeah.

Wanda Marcks Cook: Well, he's the one that writes those books, he's the one that raised little Sandy.

Bob Zybach: Oh, okay.

Wanda Marcks Cook: books. That type of thing.

Bob Zybach: What kind of reading did you do when you were a child?

Wanda Marcks Cook: When what?

Bob Zybach: When you were at Soap Creek?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Well, we had kind of. . read every thing that came in the box. And there were chores to do when you got home from school, gather the eggs, feed the chickens, what else. . and always keep the hen house door closed. Took me out in the dark many a times when I had forgotten those. No danger, but scared kid you know. And then we had homework that had to be done, we had a gramophone and each child was allowed to pick two records and that was played and then we went to our school work. And then we could read, recreational reading. And many a time I slipped a book up under my skirt and took it up the stairs and read at night, well, mother got onto that on account that the light was still on. Kerosene lamps. I still do that, I stifi find myself reading when I could sit down and be perfectly comfortable and snitching time to read. Isn't that strange. I laugh at myself.

Bob Zybach: I can relate.

Wanda Marcks Cook: And I had a customer who was the same way, I think they were Quakers, and they said "Thee" and "Thou". The father and mother. But they let the children go to any church they wanted to. But anyway, this gal when she was married, moved to Spokane and her mother said. "now Edna, do Thy work first before thee sits down to read." And we laughed over that. And she told me, she was much older than I.

Bob Zybach: One of your customers?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Customer of mine. She told me a lot about the area around here.

Bob Zybach: I'm just now starting to study the Portland area, but this here depend upon building a potential.

Wanda Marcks Cook: Laurelhurst Park was a just a swale, she picked flowers, what they call spring beauties.

Bob Zybach: On Soap Creek did you ever pick any of the wildflowers around there?

Wanda Marcks Cook: No. [yes - WMC]

Bob Zybach: Were you familiar with the dJerent varieties?

Wanda Marcks Cook: No, not really, I mean, I couldn't give you the names of them, what we called the lamb tongues, a lot of them, that's what they call the Alpine Gold up here.

Bob Zybach: But it's called lamb's tongue or Alpine Gold?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Yes. And then there's the cat's ears, it's a furry little bell. It grows up here on the mountain. I've walked all over the Mount Hood Meadows, and I am very upset when I think of what they are going to do with it. Those hills were covered with phlox. I even found the real deer moss, a little patch of real deer moss, and I had it in a little dish on the desk and the gardener, a professional gardener came along and he saw that, and he came in the shop and said, "Do you know what this is?" and I said, "I don't know. It's moss and it looked good to me, and it's different." He said, "That is the real deer moss." And he said, "I'll bet I could tell you where you got it too," and he did. Now they're destroying all of that. The Mount Hood lilies, too.

Bob Zybach: Is that development. . is that what it is?

Wanda Marcks Cook: What they're talking about developing the Mount Hood. . of course they've wrecked a lot of it already, now they're going to finish it. We used to walk all over that area, we went up about every two weeks and "side walk supervise" Timberline Lodge, young son and I. And they kept pushing and then they after they opened they had.

Bob Zybach: It sounds to me like, even though I'm only here because of Soap Creek Valley, a long but a real interesting and enjoyable life.

Wanda Marcks Cook: Oh, yes. I love the outdoors.

Bob Zybach: Do you have any regrets about anything?

Wanda Marcks Cook: We used to. . no.

Bob Zybach: It doesn't sound like it.

Wanda Marcks Cook: When they first opened up the [Columbia] Gorge, we used to go up there on the bus because we didn't have a car. Go up on the bus and then we'd climb the mountain and many, many a time hiked up Larch Mountain before they put a road up there. I resented that when they put that road in, isn't that terrible. But they didn't spoil things, it's beautiful and a lot people get to go up now that never could make the hike. Six and half miles up; every step of the way. Beautiful. Do it by moonlight and watch the sun rise.

Bob Zybach: Is that right? That's. . my friend..

Wanda Marcks Cook: Pick huckleberries.

Bob Zybach: Wow. Too bad I didn't know you about seventy or eighly years ago. I go hiking in moonlight all the tune. My girlfriend think's I'm crazy, because she's never done that. I go and get my kids to go. Ican'tfind..

Wanda Marcks Cook: If my legs hadn't given out, I'd go with you. I'd go with you right now.

Bob Zybach: That's my favorite time to hike and I've never talked to anybody that likes to hike at that time.

Wanda Marcks Cook: All the rustling things along the trail.

Bob Zybach: Did very many people hike by moonlight at that time? I can 'tfind anybody.

Wanda Marcks Cook: Yes. They did.

Bob Zybach: Another thing that you said you didn't want to go into, but it's rather comical is the spotted owl. Didn't get recorded on that.

Wanda Marcks Cook: I don't know any thing about spotted owls. [Refuses to retell story]

Bob Zybach: Were you a member of any group like Mazamc or.

Wanda Marcks Cook: No. By the time that came along, I. . I've been to the top of Mount Hood. About sixty-five years ago, but no, I never joined, by that time I was alone and. . besides I didn't have time I had a living to earn. I did my share of taldng care of the kids and putting them through college.

Bob Zybach: You put both your kids through college?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Their father helped, but.

Bob Zybach: So both your sons are Oregon State graduates?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Yes.

Bob Zybach: That would be great for the..

Wanda Marcks Cook: Roy will be interested, Dick wouldn't have known so much about it because he was born here in Portland. And when Dick graduated he was Second Lieutenant and went into the Service.

Bob Zybach: Does Roy have kids? I guess I can talk to him later.

Wanda Marcks Cook: Yes. He has four girls.